Wednesday, September 05, 2007

As a humble representative of all the Featherheads on the Reservation, I’d like to welcome Pronk back to the Cleveland Indians’ clubhouse. I don’t know where he was, nor do I care to know where he has been for the last 4 months. The only thing I care about is that he’s back, baby!

Perhaps the Indians should pay for Mr. & Mrs. Hafner to travel with the Indians for the rest of the season if this is the effect that they have on their son when attending games. I’m all for it if only to see Pronk’s dad, a mountain of a man in a plaid button-up from the Big & Tall Shop in Sykestown and an askew Tribe hat who couldn’t look anymore like a farmer from North Dakota if he tried.

Last night, it was Pronk’s turn (as one of the Indians’ pillars) to put the team on his shoulders (C.C., Grady, and Victor are sore from doing it all season) with 2 HR, including the improbable BLAST in the 9th off of Joe Nathan with 2 outs to tie the game.

In all, Hafner went 2 for 4 with the 2 aforementioned HR and 4 RBI, including the go-ahead RBI in the 11th thanks to another prodigious drive that plated Frank the Tank after Torii Hunter tracked it down.

In the last 10 games, Pronk has a .978 OPS with 3 HR and 12 RBI. Seeing as how those HR and RBI totals equal his June totals (yes, the whole month of June) and nearly match his totals from July (4 HR, 16 RBI…again, for the whole month), and realizing fully that 10 games a season does not make, it’s time to welcome Pronk back into the fold.

This Indians’ team was peaking and starting to score runs with Pronk still on the side of a milk carton, replaced by some joker named Travis. Now, somebody must have made Bruce Banner…er, Hafner mad, because Pronk is back and his return to a hot Indians team just may be the final piece of the puzzle to get the Indians truly going on all cylinders, if they weren’t already.

7 full games up with the Magic Number down to 18.The Indians are (finally) running and hiding with the AL Central…and Pronk has come back to enjoy in the revelry of a playoff chase.

Posted by
Paul Cousineau

10 comments:

since the magic number is still far enough away to make it hard to guess, but is close enough to make not making the playoffs highly unlikely, should the next voting topic be, what day will the indians clinch?

unfortunately it is mathematically impossible for us to do so when i am at the games in chicago.

Rick,I submit anything I write for this site to Rich (Swerb) to post concurrently at Swerbs' Blurbs.

Swerb, then, has a contract with STO.com to provide them with all of their original content, so all of the STO stories link to Swerbs (also known as theclevelandfan.com).

Swerbs is a nice destination for all Cleveland sports coverage highlighted (Tribe-wise) with Steve Buffum's B-List (which recaps each Tribe game) and Tony Lastoria's minor-league coverage (which is EXTREMELY exhaustive), and some other hack with a French-sounding last name.

I think I shall watch it wearing my Rally Pie shirt and nothing else. Tom Hamilton is nodding in agreement thanks to PC and the US Postal Service.

Btw, I think this was the first batch of unabashed optimism from Pluto today regarding the Indians. The poor souls that have been stuck reading Livingston and Shaw probably were very confused upon reading this article. Perhaps they even walked outside and heard birds chirping and saw the sun rising.

I'm interested to see the impact this type of writing has on the rest of their negative staff.

Sabathia having big year for Tribeposted: Tuesday, September 4, 2007 | Print Entry

Granted, it is only Sept. 4 and the Cleveland Indians are in the midst of a stretch of playing 23 days in a row. They're presently in Minnesota, will then travel to Anaheim and then finish up their road trip in Chicago. And I see Dan Haren's earned run average (2.87) and his quality starts (25) and appreciate that he may well be the best pitcher in the American League, in many ways.

But as you appreciate that the Indians beat Johan Santana five times this season and further realize that C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona won all five of those games between them, not only should one think about what the Indians may be like in a short series in October should they get there, but realize what Sabathia has done to help put the Indians six games ahead of the Tigers in the AL Central.

Click down the list of pitchers Sabathia has faced. He beat Santana three times. He was matched up with Justin Verlander twice in five days on May 26 and 31, and won both games. He has also lost to Verlander and dropped a 1-0 decision to Daisuke Matsuzaka.

He's first in the AL in wins (16) and innings pitched (211), second in complete games (three) and fourth in strikeouts (182).

Think what having the Indians go 5-1 in his starts against Santana and Verlander means to the Indians in the standings, and right now Sabathia also has to get consideration for votes in the top 10 in the AL MVP balloting.